Sogang News

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Title

Professor Dongchul Kim and His Team Developed Design Technique to Improve Lithium Ion Battery Performance

Writer

sogpr

Date

2017-05-11

Views

478

Professor Dongchul Kim and his team from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Sogang University have developed a microstructure to double the electric storage for secondary batteries. The team ran computer simulations to discover that the distribution of pores in a metallic material, which is responsible for the cathode of a battery and designed based on porous structures, may have a significant influence on lithium ion battery performance. The team’s research results were published in Scientific Reports, an international academic journal, on February 13.

Using a 3-dimensional porous structure, Professor Kim and his team opened up the possibilities for improving battery life or significantly increasing the electric storage of batteries. In the case of uses with a large output, the research results demonstrated that specific capacity losses could be reduced by up to 98% compared to the case of existing cathode materials. The findings also noted that porous structures might decrease battery performance if the pores are unevenly distributed.

The significance of this study is that it firstly demonstrates the simulation results for lithium-ion battery designs based on mathematical equations, while prior studies mostly relied on experiments.

“From this study, we were able to develop microstructure design techniques throughout the computer simulations,” said Professor Kim. “We are expecting our findings to be applied to electric cars and cutting-edge medical equipment requiring high-performance energy sources.”